


bad love lose you at your best

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 11:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16196798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: This is easily Ronan's least favorite holiday tradition.





	bad love lose you at your best

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anon on tumblr who prompted Ronan, "He doesn’t understand you like I do." I don't think this was the direction the prompt was really trying to inspire, but that's the JOY of PROMPTS, innit.

Holiday traditions are a touchy subject for a bunch of orphans, which is too fucking bad, because the holidays basically exist to generate traditions. Matthew trimming the tree, whistling the same damn carols their mom used to sing when she'd do it. Cheng and Gansey recording every shitty Hallmark movie and marathoning them the first night everyone's back in town. Declan and Ronan trying to out-drink each other at Thanksgiving, which either ends with Ronan throwing up half a turkey, or worse, with Ronan _losing_.

But forget all that shit -- the worst tradition of any holiday, hands down, is Adam's phone call home.

He didn't even _know_ it was happening right off. He'd like to think that the first time he noticed was the first time it happened, but he doesn't buy it. Adam's always been a little too good with his secrets.

It was their second Thanksgiving together when he caught on. Matthew and Opal were trying to gross each other out with turkey guts, and Ronan was yelling at them for being hooligans, and Adam had slipped past the open kitchen door. He almost looked casual, except he hadn't stopped to chat, or to tell the nightmare twins off for playing with the crap-tubes of their food. He hadn't even glanced into the room to see what was happening, and it wasn't like they were being quiet and boring. He was -- just a little too focused, like he was sneaking off somewhere. And usually when Adam snuck away from a group gathering, Ronan snuck with him. So he waited until Adam was past the door and then he followed.

He didn't spot Adam in the hallway. He must have sped up after passing the kitchen door, and he was _definitely_ trying to get away from people, which mean Ronan definitely wanted to find him. He'd walked halfway down the hall listening at every doorway when he heard it:

"Mom?"

That was never an easy word in the Barns, no matter who said it.

And it just kept getting worse:

"It's Adam." No shit, Adam, your parents had one kid. Who else could you be besides Adam, Adam who doesn't like to state the obvious, Adam who doesn't like to sound stupid when he talks.

Ronan opened the door and found Adam standing in the library. The lights were off, but the curtains were drawn, and he was standing up against the window, looking outside.

He turned when Ronan entered the room, turned back to the window after a second. "I'm sure you're busy. I just wanted to say -- Happy Thanksgiving." And then he lowered the phone from his ear and hung up.

He didn't go anywhere, which was just as well, because Ronan was so mad he couldn't speak for several minutes.

"She didn't even pick up the phone?"

Adam just stared outside. "Sometimes she doesn't."

-

That Christmas he'd been on the look out for it. Kept obnoxiously close to Adam, trailed him around the house in a way that managed to piss off both Adam and Declan, but that was usually a sign that he was doing something right anyway.

Probably hanging outside the door while Adam took to piss was a step too far, but on the other hand, Adam managed to give him the slip in the evening when Opal made a mess of lighting candles in the dining room, so clearly Ronan hadn't been invasive _enough_.

Ronan searched the whole house without finding Adam. Figured out where Adam had to be and grabbed his jacket, ended up out on the fucking porch freezing his ass off with no hat and no gloves but with, finally, Adam.

 _He_ was wearing a hat, at least, because he was the smart one, and even as Ronan spotted him he pulled his phone away from his ear and hung up. Ronan was too late to hear the call. He was not too late to see the look it put on Adam's face.

"What the fuck are you doing freezing out here in the fucking snow?" Ronan snapped. "What's the fucking point?"

Adam said, brokenly, "it's Christmas. She's my mom," and neither of those sounded true, at all.

-

Ronan had watched Adam like a hawk all day on his birthday, slunk out and followed him when he made a half-ass excuse to Blue about getting another drink. There was no way he was going to miss it this time; he caught Adam with his phone still halfway in his pocket.

Ronan stared. Adam stared back. And then he sighed, gestured a _come here_ and wrapped an arm around Ronan's shoulders, too tight. Ronan didn't move for the three and a half minutes he was on the phone.

-

Adam hasn't tried to hide the phone calls since then. It's cemented in as a tradition, the worst part of Thanksgiving, Christmas, the third of July. Year after gut-churning year of watching as Adam works up the nerve to call his mother, watching as she has the nerve to not fucking pick up, or else watching as she has the nerve to pick up and pretend she fucking deserves to talk to him. Ronan thinks Adam probably calls his mom on her birthday, but she had the nerve to be born in March, when Adam's at school, so Ronan doesn't know for sure.

He knows these three phone calls, though, far too well. They start to accumulate the cruft any tradition has: sitting on the same spot on the porch, because Adam likes to be outside or likes to separate this part of his life from the structure of the Barns or just likes to torture them both with sitting out in the fucking cold. They start getting the call out of the way in the morning, which at least leaves them time to _celebrate_ the fucking holiday afterwards.

It's a tradition, the same every year, until it isn't.

Adam says, "Dad?" and Ronan is immediately, painfully alert.

"I didn't know that," Adam is saying. There isn't any kind of emotion in his voice at all. Ronan hates hearing it. He wants Adam to stop talking -- 

"Is she going to be okay?"

A pause. Fuck, Ronan hates hearing _that_ , say something, Adam --

"I want to talk to her." Another pause, and Ronan can't tell if it's because Adam's listening or just because he's breathing, deep and ragged and too hard to speak.

"Go wake her up." Adam is tense all over and his eyes are too wide open, an animal that knows it's being hunted. Ronan is suddenly worried that he can't see the trees in front of him, can't feel the hand on his side.

He drags Adam on to his lap, wraps his arms tight around his waist so that Adam's back is pressed up against his chest. Rests his mouth on his neck and scrapes his teeth lightly against the skin there, not a proper bite but just sensation, touching him as many places as he can, the way he'd anchor him if he was scrying.

"Mom." Adam's voice goes shaky with relief, and Ronan hates that _this_ is something he's relieved about. He shouldn't be so happy about talking to this bitch.

It's not like Ronan wants him to _not_ be happy, but seriously, raise the fucking bar a little, Parrish.

"How are you?" Adam asks. Listens. "And you're -- feeling better?" A longer pause, that time. "Okay. No. No, go back to sleep. Just -- Merry Christmas," and he does at least hang up in a flash, no chance for his dad to pick the phone back up.

"What was that about?" but Ronan's mouth is still half full of Adam's neck, so it comes out more like _whudwhuzaatabow_.

"I wasn't expecting my dad to pick up."

Ronan growls: ingrained reaction to Adam's dad, but also a question.

"That's all," Adam says.

"Buwlfhit." Ronan moves his face. "Bullshit that's all. Tell me."

"It's nothing."

"C'mon. Tell me," Ronan pushes. "That's what I want for Christmas."

"That's a bleak present."

Ronan bites Adam's neck for real.

"Ow. For Christmas I want a boyfriend who's house broken."

Ronan bites his ear this time.

"Knock it off, would you?" Adam waves at him, but only about as hard as he'd swat at a fly. Ronan doesn't even blink. "My mom's sick, okay?"

"Oh."

"They think it's a bad flu. She went to the ER yesterday."

Ronan says, "you thought he put her there."

Adam flinches, but his voice betrays no reaction. "I just wanted to hear it from her, that it was just the flu."

"You did. Right?"

Adam doesn't say anything for a while.

"He was still in the room," he points out eventually.

"And you're worried about her?" Ronan cannot, cannot, bring himself to feel bad for Adam's mom, and if that's a fucking sin or a lack of goddamn compassion then too bad. The most he can dredge up is an awareness of how bad it would fuck Adam up, if his father did something to her.

Adam's voice isn't muted this time; it's thick with deprecation. "Oh, no, of course not. I care enough to judge but not enough to be there. I'm not really worried about her, I'm too selfish for that."

Ronan's arms tighten around Adam. "He said that to you?"

Adam shrugs. "Why not? It's true."

Ronan stands and turns in one quick jerk that dumps Adam on his back on the couch. Adam stares at him, amused, as Ronan kneels on the couch between his legs, sitting on his own heels to loom over Adam.

"You," he says, "are not selfish. You care about shit so much that it's stupid -- "

"You think _I_ care about stupid shit too much -- "

"Shut up," Ronan says, without any heat. Adam makes a big show of putting a finger to his mouth: _shutting up_. Or maybe just _trying to distract you_. "You judge people, but you're also right most of the time, so who cares."

"Ronan," Adam says. "Of course _you_ say that."

"I wouldn't lie just to make you feel better."

"No, but you're biased. You're in love with me. You're predisposed to see me as better than I am."

"I'm in love with you, which means I know all the really annoying shit that you do. I have a pretty fair and fucking balanced opinion of you." Adam rolls his eyes, not conceding the point. "Who do you trust more, me or him?"

The amusement drops off Adam's face in favor of shock, but he answers without hesitation: "You. Obviously."

"So I say you're not selfish, and you just have to fucking deal with that."

Adam shuts his mouth, mulish.

Ronan hooks his hands under Adam's knees and tugs his legs, sliding him along his back a few inches. "Say it."

"Fine. I'm not selfish and I trust you. Are you happy with your stupid gift?" It's sarcasm, but he _is_ , Ronan is as happy as he ever is on a Christmas morning.

He says it back like it's a joke. "Yup."

"Good, because I'm going to return your real present as soon as the stores are open."

"Fine. That means I don't have to be house broken," and he sticks his hand up Adam's shirt.

" _Jesus_ ," an absolutely perfect swear from someone who isn't thinking about anything at all, "your hands are _freezing_ \-- " and just like that they've made it through the morning. Six more months until July. Maybe Ronan can drive up to visit Adam this March.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic you can [reblog it on tumblr](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/178750593545/64-ronan)!


End file.
